PNG Govt maintains bout against anti-fraud police

Transcript

Efforts by the police fraud squad in Papua New Guinea to probe a major corruption case implicating the Prime Minister are still tied up in court.

Peter O'Neill has refused to go in for questioning over the case, as he and his supporters continue to characterise the probe as being corrupted.

Johnny Blades has more

Police fraud squad officers secured an arrest warrant for Mr O'Neill two years ago over his role in allegedly illegal state payments to the Paraka Lawyers law firm.

His lawyers launched a legal challenge to the validity of the arrest warrant.

The fraud squad head Matthew Damaru and his colleague Timothy Gitua then applied to join the proceedings around the judicial review of the warrant.

According to Mr Damaru's lawyer Nale McRonald, the Prime Minister subsequently challenged the joiner, and this is yet to be finalised in court.

So when the prime minister filed a stay on the basis of that proceedings, if the warrant was executed then it defeats the whole proceedings. So it stayed the proceedings. So the appeal now to the Supreme Court is really not on the substantive level of it, it's just on the joiner allegation to policemen.       

The matter regarding the warrant is due to be heard in court at the end of June.

In the meantime, university student protests have grown, calling for Mr O'Neill to stand aside to allow himself to be questioned by fraud squad officers.

But the prime minister has the support of his cabinet colleagues such as Sports Minister Justin Tkatchenko who says the fraud squad officers are just out to get rid of the prime minster.

So they're not going to give him a fair hearing, they will arrest him on the spot without even questioning him probably just like they did the Attorney General.  So we know what they are about, and this is why we can't allow the process to continue when it's corruptive.

Echoing the prime minister's media statements, Mr Tkatchenko says there's no evidence that he benefited from payments to Paraka Lawyers.

There is no evidence at all that the Prime Minister has ever received or taken any money from Paul Paraka. There is no evidence, so at the end of the day what are they arresting him to, nothing.

But the former PNG chief justice and attorney-general Sir Arnold Amet says that it's misleading of Mr O'Neill and his cabinet colleagues to contend that there is no evidence.

He says that is for the court to determine.

The investigators have got some evidence. When he declined to go in voluntarily, that's where it all began. Then it needed to go to a court of law and obtain a arrest warrant, and arrest warrants aren't just given arbitrarily, they are given based on credible prima facie evidence, and that you have to persuade a Judge or a Magistrate that there is suffient such material to warrant an arrest warrant being granted, so that's what's happened.

Meanwhile, the police commissioner Gary Baki has been thwarted in his bid to stop the fraud squad head seeking legal representation in a court case around Mr Baki's attempt to suspend the squad.

Matthew Damaru has been under fire from the authorities since authorising the arrest of the attorney general, Ano Pala, last month.

The National Court has refused to deal with Mr Baki's application in another sign that, despite government claims, the courts have continually upheld the fraud squad's responsibility and due process in this case.